Walking Out, Quietly: Women’s Subtle Acts of Resistance

What does it really mean to “walk out on family”? At first glance, the phrase sounds straightforward and even gender-neutral. But through the lens of culture, it carries a heavy weight - especially when the one doing the walking out is a woman. Society often condemns such acts as selfish or unnatural, reducing women to caricatures when they step outside the strict boundaries of family life. Yet not all walkouts are loud or dramatic. Many women resist quietly, in fleeting moments of refusal, carving out hidden spaces of selfhood within the folds of patriarchy. This blog reflects on these subtle, everyday acts of defiance - resistances that may appear invisible, but which hold profound power.

When we say someone “walked out on family,” do we ever pause to ask: who do we imagine doing the walking out? The phrase sounds gender-neutral, but through the lens of culture it rarely is. The act becomes deeply political the moment the subject is a woman.

For women, to walk out on family is almost always framed as betrayal. The woman who dares to leave - especially if she steps away from children or domestic duties - is branded selfish, unnatural, even monstrous. No matter the pain, violence, or disappointment that compels her, society insists that women must be content within the four walls of family. And when they are not, the blame is swiftly redirected: something must be wrong with her. Perhaps, people say, she is incapable of happiness.

These cultural strictures are powerful enough to stop many women from leaving altogether. But what if 'walking out on family' isn’t only the dramatic act of slamming the door and never returning? What if women, across time and place, have always found subtler, quieter ways of walking out - moments of refusal so delicate that they pass almost unnoticed?

Think about it. Haven’t you seen women who suddenly stop cooking for a day? Women who retreat into silence after years of constant caregiving? Women who slip into brief pockets of solitude, refusing - even if only for an hour - the endless cycle of domestic obedience? These moments may look small, even ordinary, but they are in fact tiny fissures in the seemingly solid edifice of patriarchy.

These women are scripting their own micro-resistances. They may not shout slogans or make grand proclamations, but their refusals - however temporary - are acts of self-assertion. Patriarchy has trained us to see resistance only in its loudest, most visible forms. Yet the quietest resistances can be just as powerful, if not more so.

Across generations, women have devised these hidden tactics to survive and to carve out slivers of selfhood. They live in the gaps of patriarchal expectations, designing ingenious ways to negotiate freedom - sometimes without even realising that they are 'autographing' resistance. Because resistance does not always need to be explosive. It can be micro, nano, pico, or even smaller - gentle ripples that unsettle the surface of domination.

To walk out on family, then, is not only a dramatic escape; it is also every fleeting moment when a woman claims her right to pause, to feel, to exist for herself. These quieter acts of defiance remind us that power is never absolute, and that even within the most rigid systems, women are constantly, creatively rewriting the rules of their own lives.